Visa Outlines $185 Trillion Growth Plan: Tap-to-Pay, B2B, IoT

Need to Know

• In a recent Investor’s Day meeting, Visa outlined the ways it is moving payments forward.
• Visa is embracing cashless payments on a global scale via tap-to-pay, click to pay, digital wallets, and cross-border and B2B banking.
• Visa is targeting opportunities outside of its core card business worth $185 trillion.
• Visa has about one billion cards in North America, 560 million in Europe, and 970 million in APAC, which it’s looking to grow via embedding in digital wallets and through IoT implementations in cars, appliances, and electronics.
• Visa has seen a 20% increase in transactions following the introduction of tap-to-pay.
• $120 trillion of Visa’s strategic goal is found in B2B banking opportunities.

Analysis

Visa’s strategy for moving the global economy to a cashless society appears to be working. As announced at its first investor day in three years, Visa is targeting a $185 trillion opportunity outside of the core card business using its “network of networks” to capture new flows of money. 

The payment company’s strategy lies in digitizing cash and cheque transactions across the world; introducing simpler, more effective digital payment options such as click-to-pay and tap-to-pay; embedding IoT with payment options; partnering with FinTechs to expand capability; and targeting B2B flows of money. 

Analyst Eric Wasserstrom from UBS said, “The central theme of Visa’s investor day was that, by virtue of its pivot to become a network-of-networks, it is evolving from a consumer payments company to a broader money movement ecosystem.” 

Of Visa’s $185 trillion target: 

• $120 trillion will be found in B2B opportunities: card-based spending and solutions, accounts receivables and payables, as well as cross-border banking. 
• $5 trillion will be found in merchant settlement, marketplace payouts and alternative lending. 
• $30 trillion in B2C, like insurance payouts, on-demand payroll, and gig economy payroll and spending.
• $20 trillion will be in peer-to-peer (P2P), which includes remittances.
• Unknown opportunity in the early government-to-consumer (G2C) market, which includes government benefits and tax refunds.

Oliver Jenkyn, executive president and regional vice president for Visa North America, said, “The truth is that we are just getting started with the electronification of payments in North America.” 

Visa currently has one billion cards in North America, with an opportunity to double that amount through digital integrations such as digital wallets and IoT. Visa is also looking to double its 10 million merchants in North America in addition to displacing the average 12 cash transactions per month that the average American makes to digital.

CFO Vasant Prabhu said that the recent acquisition of Plaid will accelerate new flows as well by integrating payments and making account authentication faster.

“All of this is to say, the cards are ready, the merchants are ready, and now we are focused on building the consumer habituation,” Jenkyn said.

Visa’s plans extend to APAC and Europe, both of which hold unique challenges. Chris Clark, EVP for Asia Pacific, said that cash and check equate to 48% of personal consumption expenditure, which is $6 trillion that is ripe to move to digital.

With 970 million cards, $1.9 trillion in payment volume, and 20 million acceptance locations across the region already, there still remains an opportunity to bring services to more than 768 million unbanked individuals. “That’s one-quarter of all adults in the region,” says Clark. 

Entering both India ($1 trillion) and China ($2 trillion) are huge opportunities for Visa, as well as expanding credit card offerings in both regions.

In Europe, CEO Charlotte Hogg reports that there are 560 million cards, and the opportunity to displace cash and check is $3 trillion, considering the region has four of the world’s top economies. In the Nordic countries, cashless payments account for 99% of all payments, but cash payments are still prevalent in Germany, France, and Italy.

Sanjay Sakhrani from KBW said, “[Visa] did a solid job making the case that the growth story remains strong and the future is as bright as the past. The steps Visa is taking to be “more accessible (via partnerships), robust (via the network of network strategy) and deeper (through value-added services) is a formula that will yield significant returns.”